Launching the Lightspark Platform

Today, I’m excited to announce our very first public launch since we started the company last year.

At Lightspark we believe the world needs an open, interoperable, cheap, payment protocol that settles in real time. We came to the conclusion that the Lightning Network was the best to build on, first because it operates on the most secure, battle tested, decentralized blockchain, Bitcoin. Second, because it stands out for its exceptional scalability, performance, cost, and energy efficiency.

Making the Lightning Network go mainstream, though, requires a significant amount of work to address how complex it is to operate a node on the network, and to make it well connected and reliable. Over the last few months, we spoke to many leading companies that were enthusiastic about implementing Lightning and enabling blazing fast and cheap payments for their customers. Unfortunately, many abandoned their efforts due to the operational overhead and complexity involved in achieving the reliability and performance expected of modern payment networks.

Our first “drop” aims to address these challenges by maximally simplifying the initial setup and ongoing operational burden needed to access the Lightning Network and enable consumer-friendly experiences for our clients and partners.

To break it down a bit further, today we’re shipping three different components and capabilities that work with one another:

• Lightspark Connect: enterprise-grade, automated node deployment and management.

• Lightspark Predict: smart routing to maximize transaction success rate, and predictive, automated, just-in-time liquidity deployment to significantly increase capital efficiency.

• Lightspark SDKs and API: built by developers for developers, the easiest way to integrate Lightning payments into your product and services and manage your Lightspark node and account.

We recognize that we are still in the early stages, and there is a long road ahead. The entire community of builders and innovators working on Lightning will play a crucial role in its growth. We hope our contributions to this vibrant and growing ecosystem will help accelerate the adoption and usage of the network.

For now, please take our service for a spin, and give us as much feedback along the way. Our plan is to listen and iterate very rapidly from here. We consider today to be Day One for Lightspark, and we look forward to building groundbreaking payments experiences together.

Onward!